NFL: Rams, Chargers officials to make pitch on L.A. relocation

Not long after Dave Peacock stepped down as president of Anheuser-Busch in 2012, St. Louis Mayor Francis G. Slay and his then-chief of staff Jeff Rainford began reaching out to him to see if he would be interested working on a backup plan for a new stadium in case negotiations between the Rams and St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission over improvements to the Edwin Jones Dome broke down.

For much of the next three years, while the Rams and the commission failed to reach a deal, Peacock, Rainford, Doug Woodruff, the president of a downtown St. Louis business group and Robert D. Blitz, a highly regarded local attorney, worked on what they called “Plan B” behind the scenes. By the time Missouri Governor Jay Nixon appointed Peacock and Blitz to a stadium task force last November they were already well on the way to finalizing plans for a proposed $998 million open-air stadium on the St. Louis waterfront.

The Peacock group's early start could turn out to be crucial to St. Louis’ efforts to keep the Rams and a pivotal moment in deciding where the NFL’s makes its expected return to the Southern California market next year after a more than 20-year absence.

The St. Louis group as well as a San Diego team backing a proposed $1 billion stadium for Mission Valley will meet with the six NFL owners who make the league's Committee on Los Angeles Opportunities on Monday in suburban Chicago in a what could be each group's last best chance to convince the NFL that they have viable stadium plans as momentum continues to build toward the league's return to the nation's second-largest market.

“What's big about Chicago is that it gives St. Louis and San Diego an opportunity to tell the (league) where they are at,” said Marc Ganis, a Chicago-based sports consultant who was involved in the Raiders and Rams relocations in 1994 as well as a series of NFL and Major League Baseball stadium deals in recent years. “If either of them fails, I'm not sure there's going to be a second chance for them. (The meeting) is very important to the existing markets.”

While the NFL is not expected in the coming days to decide on whether one or more teams can move to Los Angeles or even when teams will be able to apply for relocation, the two days of meetings on the Los Angeles situation at the Hyatt Hotel in Schaumburg, Ill., will help shape a road map for the league moving forward and a clearer indication of just where it will end up by the start of the 2016 season.

The Rams will make a presentation on a proposed $1.86 billion stadium for Inglewood backed by team owner Stan Kroenke to the league's owners and NFL senior staff on Tuesday, while former 49ers and Browns executive Carmen Policy will make a similar presentation on the Chargers and Raiders backed $1.75 billion stadium project in Carson.

But it is the St. Louis and San Diego presentations that will give NFL owners and officials the first clear indication of where the relocation process might be headed. Whether the St. Louis and/or San Diego projects are deemed viable by the owners and NFL senior staff could have a domino effect on the plans of the Rams, Chargers and Raiders. Monday’s meeting will also further highlight the contrast in approaches and results for the St. Louis and San Diego efforts to keep the Rams and Chargers in their current markets, according to several persons in and around the NFL who are familiar with the relocation process.

NFL officials are so skeptical about a plan by real estate consultant Floyd Kephart to build and finance a stadium in Oakland as part of a larger development that as of Friday he was not invited to participate in the Chicago meetings.

The St. Louis group goes into the meeting with significant momentum, having cleared a major hurdle last Monday with St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Thomas Frawley's ruling that public funds could be used to finance the stadium without voter approval. Several NFL owners have said they would likely oppose the Rams returning to Los Angeles if St. Louis presents a viable local option.

“From my point of view if they come up with a plan that looks pretty good and a strong financial package I think we, the NFL have an obligation in my opinion to have a team in St. Louis,” New England owner Robert Kraft, a member of the NFL’s Los Angeles committee, said during the league's spring meeting's in Phoenix. “I think the fans just like what happened in Buffalo or any of the markets. But they have to be able to support the team.”

San Diego's efforts have been marred by months of acrimony between government officials and members of a stadium task force appointed by Mayor Kevin Faulconer on one side and Chargers officials on the other and a constantly changing plan as city officials rush to overcome a series of environmental, financial and political obstacles in order to hold a Jan. 12 special election on the stadium.

The Chargers walked away from negotiations with the city and the task force in June, calling the city’s timetable to complete an environmental impact report on the proposed stadium site “completely unrealistic” and inconsistent with the California Environmental Quality Act.

As the Register first reported last month, the city has given a Chargers a Sept. 11 deadline to reach an agreement on the stadium proposal.

“St. Louis has stepped up,” Ganis said. “We don't know whether San Diego is going to" be able to present a viable plan. “We know where Oakland is and it's not a very good plan.

“St. Louis has been at it long and is more cohesive,” Ganis continued. “They've been through it before and successfully planned and developed a (NFL) stadium within the last 20 years. They've been doing this right. I've been very impressed with the way St. Louis has been doing things. There's been many opportunities for St. Louis to trash Stan Kroenke and they've never done it. Contrast it with San Diego which takes every opportunity to trash (Chargers owner) Dean Spanos. And there’s the question is a deal in San Diego worth doing? Even if it passes a ballot measure is it worth doing?”

The Chargers don’t think so. Not only does the team have concerns about the financing of the project, concerns many in the NFL share, but it broke off negotiations with the city on the advice of its legal counsel who caution that if the team signed a stadium agreement it could find itself entangled in lawsuits challenging the EIR for years.

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